that ring of confidence

Alphabet this!

I've spent a good chunk of the last few days trying to organize my life, or at least my belongings. I have quite a lot of stuff, and while it's a good sized room I'm going to be living in floor-space is less my problem than shelving. I've been discarding old university books like used zip-lock bags simply because I have no space to keep them and no time or energy to go through the long and complicated process of trying to sell them. I have one book shelf and I'm trying to devote that to books that I'm going to read again, and not books that I bought because I had to, read three chapters the night before the exam and then threw into a box.

Last night was taken up by the long process of putting my DVD movies in alphabetical order. There are a couple that have turned up randomly in boxes since then, and a few that I know I have but can not find, so the job isn't done yet. However after buying four DVD shelves, that can be built into two shelves, I am nearly good in the way of shelving. In that I almost have enough shelving. I also got two clothes racks so I could hang up my shirts and jackets since I have no closet space.

The good news for people who love bad news

Due to work and not being able to take Monday off I won't be coming to Vancouver today. So if you were one of the three people who I informed of my second coming, it's been called off on account of employment. So I'll have to come down sometime in September if I can, in order to get my Mini serviced.

Warning Bell: a run around of recent events

It has been, I must admit, an event filled last few days.

First off Graham is in town (all the way from Japan), mainly for Ryan Corbett's wedding. We got to hang out a bit Sunday night but he's been up at his parent's cabin until yesterday. Since then, and it looks like until he leaves, he's been busy busy with Ryan's wedding stuff. Ryan is having the full traditional wedding with tux fittings, rehersal dinners and golf outings. Which is far different than the Nathan Carter All You Can Leave Behind Wedding Experiance of Simplicity. I can see how both styles would have their appeal, but being a traditional type myself I would probably opt for the Corbett style for myself.

I like pomp and the circumstance.

As I'm typing this the sky just opened up and started to pour water on everything in sight. I'm talking end of days style rain and not just your poncy Vancouver light drizzle. Go outside, tilt your head to the sky and open your mouth and you'll drown.

Arsenal beat Blackburn to claim 43-match unbeaten record

I suppose there are a few things to be optimistic about. Listening to my iPod at lunch today I was cheered up a bit simply by listening to Oasis' "Supersonic". Then Arsenal went and won today to go back to the top of the Premiership and make history by going through a record number of games without being beaten. Now all I need is to win the lotto and save the life of a beautiful woman who will then fall in love with me, and all will be good.

LONDON, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Arsenal became the first side in English football to go 43 league matches unbeaten when they defeated Blackburn Rovers 3-0 at Highbury on Wednesday. The north London club surpassed the 42-match unbeaten record set by Nottingham Forest between November 1977 and December 1978 and have not lost a Premier League game since a 3-2 defeat by Leeds United at Highbury in May 2003.

The wheels fall off

I should have known today was going to fall in the same mold of the week of (irony coming) awesomeness that I've been living through when it began at 1:30 am, ended at 5:30 am and then began again at 8:00 am. Yes, in a tragic example of total coolness I woke up for no reason in the middle of the night and then couldn't get back to sleep until about two and a half hours before I was supposed to get up.

The rest of the day has not exactly been coming up roses either. I missed a conference call for senior sales reps that took place this morning at 8:30 am just out of sheer not remembering. I was awake, all I would have had to do was dial a number and brush my teeth as I listened to everyone else talk, but nope. Then due to a the current inventory situation at our store, which is a chain of responsibility far more convoluted than it needs to be, I got in heck for an order of Nokia 3100s not being sent to Victoria a few days ago. I got in heck from the regional manager as well as Ken.

Technically I'm Ken's boss but the whole fucking situation is so fucked up because of how the regional manager has made sure I have no actual authority so that everyone under me is pretty confident that they can treat me like crap with no worries. About a week ago Ken went off on me about how much of a bad manager I am, a rant that apparently he performs quite a lot when I'm not around.

I feel like I can not do anything right at this point.

Is it wrong?

Is it wrong to have feelings for 17 year old Romanian gymnist Catalina Ponor? I mean, it seems wrong some how, but yet so right.

She was the best thing about watching the Olympics with my parents last night, and her performance on the balance beam was excellent as far as performances on balance beams go. I mean it's not football (soccer) but as far as Olympic sports go there are worse things than watching girls jump around in tights. (Worse things include discuss and anything involving horses.)

So if you are are Catalina Ponor and are wanting say a Canadian Green Card, why not drop me a line and email me. Or send me an invite to one of the gymnastic contests. You can tell me in broken English about winning the gold medal in the balance beam, and I can... I don't know teach you how to drive.

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In other news the Rogers network is having a national outage, which means the next few hours are going to be so very very cool as everyone in Kelowna with a Rogers phone, or who knows someone with a Rogers phone, calls us to see what the heck is going on.

My headache is back.

Blah

I've not yet left for work and I'm already wanting to go on my lunch break. Perhaps because the last conversation I had the night before was about medical conditions I woke up this morning feeling like someone kicked the shit out of my immune system.

Something tells me that the only thing that could make today cooler is if someone stabbed me in the eye while pouring sugar in my gas tank.

The only good news is the Arsenal game is being replayed on Fox Sports World tonight so I'll have some glimmer of hope to get me through the day. Especially since I already know the score.

Age cannot wither the subtle art of a Dutch master

Guardian Unlimited Football | News | Age cannot wither the subtle art of a Dutch master

There's an interesting article on the Guardian website about the reemergence of Dennis Bergkamp over the past few years. After having a few quiet years at Arsenal he's started to peak again, and provides an important counter point to the speed of Henry.

The goal they talked about that he scored against Newcastle a few years ago was simply breathtaking. It was perhaps the most perfect goal I've ever seen. His back was to the goal, he received the pass, kicked the ball one way and spun the other and then received his own pass and scored. It was incredible.

Pitches will deteriorate, the weather will worsen, opponents will get nastier and Arsenal will grow careworn. This is Bergkamp's hour, when everything about him, including his strength, is taking other teams aback. It was all on show even in the Community Shield, when he plopped ideal passes two or three yards behind the Manchester United defence.

He is not the very greatest footballer his country has produced but he may be the perfect embodiment of the Dutch concept of the game. Bergkamp has that spatial imagination. He is hyper-sensitive when sizing up position, angle and possibility. The very best of his goals are hymns to geometry.

Premiership: Week 2

Arsenal won again this week, keeping their undefeated run alive and staying on top of the table due to goal difference. While we managed to win I hope that the club takes a few important lessons from the game. The first is that while being able to out score the opposition 5 - 3 is all well and good, going down 3 - 1 is not. And while we might be able to pull ourselves back into a game like that against Middlesbrough while they're missing their two normal central defenders.

Again there were some bright spots on the day. We managed to win despite missing Patrick Vieira and Sol Campbell. When Campbell returns out back four will start to look a little less fragile and Vieira will also add some back bone to the defenders. Also good is that while Henry continues to show that his performance in Euro 2004 was not typical and that he's going to continue to dominate the Premiership, the Gunners have a few other players stepping up to twinkle the twine as they say in hockey.

Dennis Bergkamp is continuing to perform well and looks to be able to hold out for his last year. At 35 he is certainly one of the most senior members of the team, and if he can continue to avoid injury he should have a great season. He's been stand in Captain while Vieira has been out and it's really suited him.

the people I used to know

martinis and sequined hips

I am supposed to be at a wedding reception in about three minutes. It's for Todd Leskie, who is the former A&E Editor of the Phoenix and who now has my old job as Editor-in-Chief. (Ironically I have his old job as A&E Editor.) However I felt that I should arrive fashionably late, so as to suggest that I have a lot of other important and pressing matters to attend.

To suggest that I am cool beyond measure.

So the important and pressing matters that I am attending to are listening to Underworld's "Mmmm Skyscraper I Love You" on the iTunes and posting this entry.

"30,000 feet above the Earth,
it's a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing.
30,000 feet above the Earth,
it's a beautiful thing, everybody's a beautiful thing."

So after checking up my Friendster.com account, where I currently have a grand total of three friends, I noticed that Vanessa left me a testimonial. A testimonial is where one of the people who have signed up to be your friends on Friendster write something about you. Vanessa wrote a very nice little thing for me and it made me feel all warm and gushy inside like back in the days when dancing kitten flash animation was still popular.

So I did a little digging around, meaning I re-read her profile, and I found her latest blog and went to it and read it for a bit. And then got further mushy, kitten flash mushy, feelings. So I thought shit wouldn't it be good to see some people who I haven't seen for a long time?

"And I see Elvis! Elvis!
I hear God on the phone!"

This was compounded by the brief conversation I had with Graham "I Live In Japan" Taylor after work today. He's in Kelowna for a week or so, mainly for Ryan Corbett's wedding which I think is next Saturday. The only post high school friends I really have are Cass, Delme and Todd Leskie. I've got a few CUP friends like Don Iveson but they're scattered around the country.

So, since I want to appear super cool at this wedding reception, I am going to kill a little more time doing an update of the people who I called friends who graduated from OKM in 1997. So click below if you want to know what's up with the people I know.

Wedding 2

Todd Leskie is getting married. Probably right as I type this. The Phoenix Editor-in-Chief will be the second of three of my friends getting married this month. The first was, of course, Nathan Carter and the last will be Ryan Corbett. Nathan's was the only wedding I was invited to, but I'm going to Todd's reception later tonight.

Of our group of friends in high school three of the guys will be married by the end of the month (Ryan, Nathan and Doug) and one of the girls (Karen Wilson who has been married for sometime. I wasn't sure whether or not I should include Shannon or Ali who are both apparently married as well, so I didn't). Chris is getting married next year and Chad is pretty close to getting married himself.

As an upshot I discovered that weddings provide you with a very easy to please audiance for public speaking. Much better than talking to high school students, talking to drunk relatives of the wedding couple is easy with a capital 'E'. So hopefully over the next little while I'll have ample oppertunity to try out my sub-Sandler level comedic stylings.

One of those days when you want to try heroin

So the excitment that is work has begun. Today and tomorrow should prove to be the penultimate in crappiness. It's just one of those days when, as the Weakerthans say, you want to try heroin. I had given some, fairly vauge, thought to getting pissed drunk before work and showing up with the smell of vodka coming from my pores, but then I decided that maybe that would make this one day go much smoother but would probably complicate any further working days.

So I'm stone cold sober. Which will make this day extra long. As an added bonus I came in early today. I'm going to take a long lunch. I've got to buy some stamps today, so that will be a reason to extend it (the lunch hour) a bit too. Right now the store is dead, which does not bode well for the events that have yet to unfold. A busy store would make things go easier. That and I could use some money.

Oh well. What can you do? Watch Trainspotting and make believe I suppose.

"I've got Kitty Pryde, and Nightcrawler too..."

When people ask me what sort of girls I like, or questions like that my first instinct is always to answer, "Oh you know someone sort of like Kitty Pryde." This of course is an answer that just won't do, seeing as Kitty Pryde is a character in a comic book (Shadowcat in the X-Men comics) and not even one of those quasi-life like indie comics that Rob Butz used to (and maybe still does) read.

Nope, she's a super-hero type comic book character.

Now in my defense she's not exactly Wonder Woman or She-Hulk, she's as down to earth a character as one is going to find in a book about people with genetic mutations that give them extraordinary powers. So there you go, you know about my Kitty Pryde fetish. Aren't you glad you beat it out of me? It's probably the least interesting, yet more dorky, secret ever.

The only way to reclaim some hipster image at this point is to bust out with some Weezer lyrics. So here are some Weezer lyrics for me to bust out with.

By the way I realize that it is even less likely for me to end up with Kitty Pryde as it for say me to end up with Natalie Portman or as the first Prime Minister of the Lunar Colony. However in lieu of a real girlfriend one can dream.

Weezer Album: Weezer (Blue) "In The Garage"

I've got a Dungeon Master's Guide
I've got a 12-sided die
I've got Kitty Pryde
And Nightcrawler too
Waiting there for me
Yes I do, I do

English Premier League: Week 1

The high of reading the opening week's results on the Guardian's football site is starting to wear off. Granted I'm still overly happy about Arsenal's 4 - 1 win over Everton, and about Patrick Vieira declaring his love for Arsenal and staying put for now but being an Arsenal fan I still see a season full of traps, tricks and disaster ahead for the Gunners. Granted I saw the same thing at the start of last season and we won the Premiership unbeaten, but then again there's no way we're going to go unbeaten for a second year running. However the win was a positive, and it had a few good omens in it, which I'll cover here.

The most positive thing is that the team that dominated featured neither Patrick Vieira nor Sol Campbell, both were out with minor injuries. Now how this works out for the best is that if the team finally is strong enough to put in some dominating performances without key players then they're less likely to drop easy points. Our 2002 - 2003 title challange was lost when Vieira and Campbell were both out with injuries and suspensions. An Arsenal team that can win without them and Henry is a team that could win everything.

Which brings us to good point number two, Henry did not score. Again this initially sounds like a negative, having Henry hit a dry spell would ruin the season quicker than anything else short of Real Madrid moving to England. However I see it as a positive. Having Jose Antonio Reyes score is hopefully a sign that he's going to take to the Premiership. Having Dennis Bergkamp score is hopefully a sign that he's going to remain effective for his last season. That Pires and Ljungberg scores hopefully means that they're going to be back to the form that won us the Double. Too often last season the game plan was simply get it to Henry and let him work his magic. That can not be the team's only option for yet another season.

Airtunes: wi-fi music for my Mac

I ordered an iSight, Apple's webcam, and an Airport Express station for my Powerbook the other day. I've been looking at both devices for awhile, especially the Airport Express which solves a few issues I've had with the way my living area is arranged.

A short post

This is just a short post to let you know I'm still alive. I can't promise for how much longer, but currently we're golden. Golden like 'the Mythical Golden Ram' of CUP lore.

Nathan versus Krista: the wedding

I noticed that I haven't posted anything for about a week, and that the last post was just the text of a speech I gave at the wedding of Nathan Carter to Krista Carter (formerly Osborne). So since the wedding is sort of the biggest thing that's happened to me for the past little bit I figured it should get it's own post before I start back up into the blow by blow blogging that you've all come to know and love.

The wedding took place last Saturday at Minstrel Cafe in Kelowna. It's the last commercial building on Lakeshore Road before it heads up into the Chute Lake / Lakeshore split and into the boonies where I used to live. I'd never eaten there since it's been Minstrel Cafe, though Krista and Nathan had performed there a few times. The wedding ceremony took place outside in the garden while the reception took place both inside and outside, with the toasts and performance parts of the evenign taking place inside. Krista's Dad, who is a minister, performed the ceremony and Nathan's Dad, who is a Doctor of Divine Pyschology, performed the role of master of ceremonies.

Note I don't have any photos from the ceremony, though Chad if you're reading this that might be kinda cool.

The speech I gave 3 minutes ago at the wedding of Nathan and Krista Carter

It's hard for men to talk about friendship in a meaningful way without sounding feeling self-concious but I will try to do it for a few moments.

Nathan is one of the best friends I've ever had and the last decade and a bit of my life has been made imeasurably richer by having him as a friend, if only because he laughs at my jokes.

So when Nathan announced that he was marrying Krista I fell into a deep depression. They would get married, move to Vancouver to become fabulously succesful university students.

Things were going to change, and I was unhappy about that. I had gotten spoiled, I was used to having Nathan all to myself. I was used to being avle to convince him to take random trips through northern Alberta for no other reason than we wanted to.

But if television has taught me anything, it's that every cloud is hemmed with a lining made of silver. I realized that I had to look on the bright side of life. I had to understand that I was not so much losing a friend, but gaining a girlfriend.

These sort of speeches generally end in a ribald story about “that one time in Vegas.” Sadly Nathan doesn't have any of those sort of stories in his past for me to bring up and embarass him and anger Krista. And while Nathan does have a fierice coat of back hair I don't have any amusing hair removal stories to allude cryptically to.

In summing up I wish I could say something affermative to leave you with, but instead I simply say I know that Nathan and Krista will make each other very happy.

And maybe, if I'm lucky they will both laugh at my jokes.

Temp voice mail code

The following story, like almost anything you read on the Internet, is 80% untrue.

One of the hot waitresses from Boston Pizza came in and I was all like, "Hey."

And she was all like, "Hey, what's my voice mail code?"

And I was all like, "I'll tell you if you tell me the code to your heart."

Then I was all like, "Hey why did you slap me? Now I'm crying."

She was like, "You wuss. Give me my voice mail code or I'll kick your ass."

So I was like, "10804."

I think it's love.

Only 2 songs in me

I am stuck in traffic, trying to get to Vernon before Ebenezers closes so I can get my weekly comic injection.

It is raining and I always enjoy driving in the rain. And no that's not just me being sarcastic or my dry humour. (Get it, rain - dry humour). My iPod is playing “Run” by Snow Patrol.

It feels good to pull out of traffic and hit the faster flow of the highway. Coming back from Alberta I got my first (Canadian) speeding ticket here so I'm cautious, though I've been down this patch of road dozend of times.

I'm free and clear. I tell my iPod to play the new Matt Good album and as I drive I come up with my first decent idea for a novel in years. In my mind I've already sold the movie rights and cast the film.

Ebenezers has my comics on hold including the new Astonishing X-Men written by Joss Wheadon (issue #3).

Traffic leaving Vernon is running stupid so I decide to stop at the Earls at the edge of town. I order two appetizers for my meal and then dig into the bag of comics. The waitress tries not to call what I'm reading comics, settling instead on the term “magazines”.

Soon I'm back on the road, heading to Kelowna. So I send this as traffic clears and “Blue Skies Over Bad LandsK comes on my iPod.